2010 September | Imagine This!

Friday, September 24, 2010

8 ways to celebrate National Punctuation Day with your students

Do you know what today is? Besides being a Friday, and besides being September 24 (and my brother’s birthday), it’s National Punctuation Day.

Founded in 2004 by newsletter writer Jeff Rubin, National Punctuation Day is a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.”

To promote proper punctuation awareness, Jeff and his wife, Norma, maintain their website, nationalpunctuationday.com. They also visit elementary schools, where they perform a punctuation assembly. Their theme: “Punctuation is important in helping children learn to read and write with clarity.” Dressed as a caped punctuation superhero, Jeff shows kids how learning punctuation can be fun. So what can you do to make learning punctuation fun for your students?

Posted by Shar in ESL | 3 Comments »

Friday, September 24, 2010

Announcing our funniest stories giveaway winner

Before we announce the winner of our funniest classroom stories contest, we want to thank everyone who shared their humorous classroom experiences. They were a blast to read! Check out all the entries in the comments section of this post.

The winner of the $25 gift card is Tiffanie Brown with her story of curious students on a field trip. Congratulations, Tiffanie! Contact me at taylor.rose@imaginelearning.com to claim your prize.

In case you missed it, here’s Tiffanie’s winning story: Read more »

Posted by Taylor in ESL | 1 Comment »

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Should your ELs be speaking English at home?

There appear to be at least two schools of thought about which language English learners (ELs) should be speaking at home. While some encourage parents of ELs to speak English with their children, Judie Haynes makes a convincing argument for parents speaking their first language at home, even while their children are learning English at school. Read more »

Posted by Jim in ESL | 5 Comments »

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Translating the twittertalk: A beginner’s twittorial

You swore you’d never do it, but you finally took the plunge — you signed up for Twitter. Now it’s time to make sense of the symbols and acronyms, so you can follow what’s going on in your newly created community.

We’ve put together a list of the most common Twitter terms, the schedules for some of the best education-related chats, and some tips and notes on Twitter etiquette to help you get the most out of your new account.

Posted by Lisa in EdTech | 1 Comment »

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Twitter: Trivial pursuit or powerful research tool?

Last week, one of our curriculum designers ran into a problem. She needed more information on using blogs in elementary school classrooms, but wasn’t quite sure where to go for resources on this relatively new topic.

So where did she turn for help? Not Google. Not her trusty resource guides. Nope—she turned to Twitter. “Need help!” @Stacy_Learning wrote. “Anyone use/know how to use blogs in elementary classrooms?”

Within minutes, members of her Twitter network responded with links, resources, and research. Five hours later, she’d heard from numerous Twitter users and been pointed to a plethora of resources. “People just started responding to me,” she said. “In fact, one user said, ‘I can help you. Here’s where to go, here’s who you can follow, here’s who you can contact.’”

Like many educators and administrators, Stacy was initially skeptical of Twitter. “I thought it would be really trivial,” she confessed. But her experience with Twitter taught her that the website is anything but a trivial timewaster. Now, instead of seeing Twitter as superficial social networking site, she sees it as one of her most powerful research and professional development tools.